INDIA
Teenage girl set on fire
A teenage girl has died one week after a gang of men set her on fire as punishment for resisting their attempts to molest her, police said yesterday. Police have arrested four men over the attack which occurred after the 15-year-old girl stepped outside her home in Uttar Pradesh state on Nov. 16. The girl’s family has told police that six men dragged her back inside the house after she objected to their lewd gestures and attempts to touch her, local superintendent R.K. Sahu said. The men then doused her in kersosene and set her on fire as punishment in Shahjahanpur, 277km southeast of New Delhi, according to the family. The girl was taken to a local hospital, but died of her injuries on Sunday night, the officer said. “Four of the six accused have been arrested. All of them belong to the same village and are of the same caste as that of the girl,” Sahu said. Police are hunting for the other two accused.
NEW ZEALAND
Phil Rudd appears in court
AC/DC drummer Phil Rudd showed up late for a court appearance yesterday and clowned around by jumping on the back of one of his security guards outside the courthouse. Rudd did not enter a plea during his brief appearance. The 60-year-old is charged with threatening to kill, which comes with a maximum prison sentence of seven years, as well as possessing methamphetamine and marijuana. Citing a lack of evidence, prosecutors earlier dropped a more serious charge that alleged Rudd tried to hire a hit man to kill two people.
CHINA
Putin’s tiger is main suspect
A Siberian tiger released into the wild by Russian President Vladimir Putin is the main suspect in a series of goat deaths, state media reported local authorities as saying on Tuesday. Siberian tiger experts have pegged Ustin, one of three tigers freed by Putin, as the killer of 15 goats, Xinhua news agency said. Three goats are still missing. According to a witness, the dead goats’ skulls had been crushed with puncture holes “the size of a human finger.” Ustin crossed into China last month with another of Putin’s tigers, both of which carry tracking devices, Xinhua said.
FRANCE
Paris police chase robbers
Two men with an AK-47s robbed a Cartier jewelry store near the Champs-Elysees in Paris on Tuesday, leading to a police chase and a brief hostage-taking when they sought refuge in a hair salon. The suspects agreed to release the hostage and turn themselves in, with the entire drama lasting about two hours. Police recovered a cache of jewels the men had stolen. The two men burst into the store late in the day and forced customers and staff to lie down. They then demanded that the store’s showcases be opened, but were interrupted as they gathered jewelry by the sound of police sirens. The suspects fled on a scooter while shooting into the air, but later fell and ran away on foot, before entering the hair salon.
FRANCE
Couple found dead at home
A 98-year-old American and his British wife, 86, were found shot dead in their home in Fabas in what police suspect might have been a murder-suicide by the couple. The cleaning lady found the bodies early on Monday, with the husband dead from two gunshots and his wife killed by a single wound to the side of her head, a police source said. Police found a .22-caliber handgun, which belonged to the husband.
SPAIN
Crew try to burn drug ship
Drug traffickers tried to set fire to their own ship to get rid of tonnes of hashish on board after being intercepted by a navy vessel, the government said on Tuesday. The navy ship approached the Portuguese-flagged fishing boat, which was carrying 10 to 15 tonnes of hashish, on Sunday in the Mediterranean, the Ministry of the Treasury said in a statement. “When it approached, the crew of the fishing boat set fire to a can of gasoline with the aim of setting fire to the ship and get rid of the drugs which they were transporting,” it said. Customs agents on board the navy vessel put out the fire, seized control of the fishing boat and detained its 10 crew members: five Portuguese, two Senegalese, a Spaniard, a Guinean and a Ghanaian.
TURKEY
Police sniff out fake perfume
Keen-nose police officers have seized more than 118,000 bottles of fake perfume in the biggest such haul in recent years, the Istanbul Police Force said on Tuesday. Police raided nine warehouses in the Zeytinburnu and Bahcelievler districts in the city’s European side, where fake perfumes bearing the names of luxury brands were being stored and produced. More than 622,000 empty bottles, as well as boxes, containers and chemicals used to make the fake perfume were also seized during the week-long operation. One person was arrested during last week’s raids, the police department said on its Web site. The seized products were worth more than US$10 million, police said.
UNITED STATES
Man held for ‘banana gun’
A man is facing a felony menacing charge after two western Colorado sheriff’s deputies said he pointed a banana at them and they thought it was a gun. The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel reported that 27-year-old Nathan Rolf Channing of Fruitvale was arrested on Sunday. According to an arrest affidavit, Mesa County deputies Joshua Bunch and Donald Love said they feared for their lives even though they saw that the object was yellow. Bunch wrote in the affidavit that he has seen handguns in many shapes and colors. He wrote that Love was drawing his service weapon when Channing yelled: “It’s a banana!” The deputies said Channing told them he was doing a trial run for a YouTube video and thought it would “lighten the holiday spirit.”
UNITED STATES
Object 3D-printed in space
The first 3D printer in space has popped out its maiden creation. The 3D printer delivered to the International Space Station two months ago made a sample part for itself this week: a faceplate for the print head casing. Space station commander Butch Wilmore removed the small creation from the printer on Tuesday for eventual return to Earth. About 20 objects will be printed in the next few weeks for analysis back home, NASA said. The space agency hopes to one day use 3D printing to make parts for broken equipment in space.
VENEZUELA
Chavez honored with ballet
His signature adorns buildings, his eyes grace thousands of red T-shirts and caps, and there is even a font to perpetuate his calligraphy. Now, the legacy of former president Hugo Chavez has moved to the stage with a special ballet in his honor. The state-sponsored work From Spider-Seller to Liberator is to show at a Caracas theater on Saturday in homage to Chavez’s life from poor boy selling homemade spider-shaped papaya sweets in his rural hometown to president for 14 years.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not